Mt Catherine, Olallie Mtn, Mt Hyak, Ski Acres Hill

Skinning up the road

Nov 6, 2022, 8am – 5pm

16 miles

With weather pretty bad most locations and one free day I decided to test out new winter gear at one of the closest locations where the precipitation would be snow. I had some new electrically-heated socks for an upcoming expedition that I wanted to take for a test trip. And it looked like there might just barely be enough snow at Snoqualmie Pass to take the skis out.

I drove out sunday morning in pouring rain that changed to snow just before the pass. The road was pretty slippery, and the pass had been closed Saturday from spinouts, but it was luckily open for me. I parked at Hyak and started booting up a little before sunrise. The snow soon got barely deep enough to skin, and I skinned up the road. It was still way too thin on the ski slopes.

The route

I skinned up to the summit of Hyak, and it was a little deeper there but still not enough to leave the road. So instead of getting ski laps in I decided to change the trip into a peakbagging trip. I skinned over to as close as the roads went to Ski Acres Hill, then bushwhacked the last bit. I then skied around some other roads up to as close as possible to Olallie Mtn. I had climbed this peak a previous year in winter and remembered a bit of a bushwhack to the summit, but now it looked like a recent trail had been cut.

I ditched my skis and booted up to the top. Then the trail continued along the ridge. This was very unexpected. I had planned on turning around, but it looked like there was a chance the trail continued to Mt Catherine. So I continued following it, postholing through shin-deep snow.

Good views from Ollalie

The trail continued down to the pass below Mt Catherine, but ended there at a cross country ski trail. From there I bushwhacked steeply up and eventually reached the summit. The previous time I had been to Mt Catherine I had skied up with Greg Slayden and we could ski down from the very summit, but there wasn’t enough snow this time.

I retraced my route back bushwhacking down, then followed the trail back up and over Ollalie to my skis. I tried to ski down a bit, but started scraping on rocks, so booted down to where the trail leveled out. From there I was able to ski back all the way, following my up tracks, to just above the parking lot. I saw a few other ski tracks down low also. Then I booted the last bit back to the lot by sunset.